On Monday, the Justice Department released the findings of a study,
"Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency
Departments," showing that about 1.4 million violence-related
injuries a year are treated in emergency rooms, far surpassing
earlier government estimates. The study also shows that about 37% of
violence-related injuries to women are inflicted by spouses,
ex-spouses, or boyfriends.

Bonnie Campbell, director of the Justice Department's Violence
Against Women Office, has said that the numbers provide "sobering
proof" that domestic violence is underreported. In fact, according to
projections from the study, 204,129 women and 38,790 men annually
seek emergency-room treatment from injuries related to domestic
violence. These are disturbing numbers. But they also show that
domestic violence advocates, politicians, and the media have
consistently exaggerated the scope of the problem.

These claims have been repeated by major news organizations
including Newsweek, Time, The Washington Post,
and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They have been cited by
the American Medical Association and by the Department of Health and
Human Services, by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and by President
Clinton.

The new Justice Department numbers show that ALL violence is
responsible for about 3% of women's INJURY-RELATED visits to
emergency rooms, and domestic violence for about 1%. Since fewer than
a third of women's emergency-room visits are injury-related, this
means that domestic violence accounts for fewer than 0.3% of these
visits. While it is possible that some domestic violence cases were
not identified in the study, it is noteworthy that its estimates
include not only positively established but probable cases of
violence from injuries.

Statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control last March,
in a report titled "National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey:
1992 Emergency Department Summary," show that the leading cause of
injury, to both women and men, is accidental falls, followed by motor
vehicle accidents. According to the CDC, 13.6 of injuries to women
seen in emergency room are from car accidents -- a total of nearly 2
million, or almost 10 times the number of injuries from domestic
violence.

Indeed, CDC numbers show that more than twice as many women visit
emergency rooms due to being injured by an animal (459,000 a year)
than by a male partner. The Justice Department report does confirm
that women are much more likely than men to be physically harmed by
an intimate partner. However, it shows that men account for about 16%
of injuries from domestic violence, contradicting the common claim
that 95% of abuse victims are women. The report also notes that the
numbers should be treated with some caution because, for 35% of men
with violent injuries (compared to only 20% of the women), the
victim-offender relationship was not identified. It may be that
because of cultural norms, men are reluctant to disclose that they
were assaulted by a female partner.

Furthermore, the Justice Department numbers clearly show, as do
other statistics, that the primary victims of interpersonal violence
in the United States are men: in this study, men accounted for 60% of
patients with injuries from violence.

"For years, claims about the horrific scope of violence against
women have been used by the ideologues to portray American society as
a violent patriarchy in which women are constantly under assault by
male terrorism, and the greatest threat to women is the men in their
lives," said Cathy Young, vice-president of the Women's Freedom
Network. "The Justice Department numbers show what critics of
gender-war feminism have been saying for some time: the numbers have
been exaggerated to serve an ideological agenda and promote policies
that create a virtual presumption of guilt in domestic abuse cases.
Domestic violence, and the level of violence in our society in
general, needs to be addressed. But there is no need to distort the
truth or to foster division between the sexes."Source: http://womensfreedom.org/press.htm